428 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Yol. ix. 



depends, in some measure, on exposure. In the neighborhood 

 of high river banks, radiating their heat in two directions, and 

 in situations not reached by the sun, the frost runs much deeper 

 than in the open. The question, however, to which Sir John 

 Richardson called attention so long ago as 1839, is well deserv- 

 ing of systematic enquiry, and may even throw some light on 

 the profoundly interesting subject of a geographical change in the 

 position of the earth's axis of rotation. Indeed, Dr. Haughton 

 has actually, on other grounds, assigned a position in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Yakutsk to the pole of the earth in -Miocene times. 



" The Saskatchewan was first navigated by steam in 1875, 

 when a vessel of about 200 tons ascended from the Grand Rapid 

 to Edmonton,'700 miles. There is, however,tan obstacle at Cole's 

 Falls, below Carlton House, which has led to a break of naviga- 

 tion, and a small steel steamer, originally intended for the Upper 

 Athabasca, has recently been transferred to the Upper Saskat- 

 chewan ; between the two, it is now navigated from the Grand 

 Rapids, near Luke Winnipeg, to the base of the Rocky Moun- 

 tains. A steamer also plies regularly on Lake Winnipeg, and 

 has ascertained many interesting particulars, of which we have 

 hitherto been ignorant. Its greatest depth apparently does not 

 exceed 100 feet. Its discharge has at lust been followed by Dr. 

 Robert Bell, down the Nelson river, to the sea. That gentleman 

 reports the impediments to navigation to be insuperable, and a 

 company has been very recently formed to make a railway from 

 the lowest navigable point to the mouth of the Churchill river. 



" Our hopes of further light upon the history of the ill-fated 

 Franklin expedition, based on information given by a Netchelli 

 Esquimaux, to the xlmericau Captain Potter in 1872, have been 

 again disappointed. An American search expedition landed at 

 Depot Island, ( lat. 64°,) in the neighbourhood of which traces 

 were reported, in August 1878, wintered there, and examined 

 the country, as yet with no result, except a correction of the 

 charts, 



" Hudson's Bay itself cannot fail at no distant day to challenge 

 more attention. Dr. Bell reports that the land is rising at the 

 rate of 5 to 10 feet in a century, that is, possibly, an inch a year. 

 Not however, on this account will the hydrographer notice it ; 

 but because the natural seaports of that vast interior now thrown 

 open to settlement, Keewatin, Manitoba, and other provinces un- 

 born, must be sought there. York Factory, which is nearer Liver- 



